Executive Yuan to host homeland security conference

By Shih Hsiu-chuan / Staff reporter

Thu, Nov 29, 2012 - Page 3

A US Department of Homeland Security delegation will visit Taipei next week to attend an international conference on homeland security, along with officials and experts from the EU, Malaysia and Israel, the Executive Yuan said yesterday.

The Executive Yuan’s Office of Homeland Security is organizing next Wednesday’s conference, which will be the third since the event was first held in 2010.

The office said this would be the last time Taiwan hosts the conference, which has served as a mechanism for the government to float strategies for cross-border cooperation on homeland security issues, “due to a lack of funds.”

Anne Witkowsky, deputy coordinator for homeland security and multilateral affairs in the US Department of State’s Bureau of Counterterrorism, had been scheduled to deliver an address on the shaping of US homeland security policy, but she will not able to take part because of scheduling problems, the office said.

On the conference agenda are issues such as border control policies related to counterterrorism, travel management, national strategy for global supply chains security and prevention and deterrence of terrorists act targeting infrastructure facilities, the office said.

Yvan De Mesmaeker, secretary-general of the European Corporate Security Association, Ilan Mizrachi, former head of Israel’s National Security Council, Monika Mosshammer from the European Commission’s Directorate General for Home Affairs, and Malaysian customs boss Dato Md Salleh Said are among those invited to the event, the office said.